Football fans love schadenfreude, especially if the overly emotional World Cup hosts are being eviscerated to the point of embarrassment in front of their own fans. As the goals rolled in for Germany, the mocking voices rose on Twitter, peaking in the minute Sami Khedira scored Germany's fourth goal, when 580,166 tweets were sent.

Some of those tweets must have offered commiserations to Brazil, but most fans were more interested in gleeful mockery than sympathy. That's football supporters for you: if their team isn't playing they might as well entertain themselves by laughing at the poor losers on show. Isaac Newton said that every action produces an equal and opposed reaction. In football speak, that means that for every great winner we have to admire begrudgingly, there is a bedraggled loser we can mock relentlessly. Last night that loser was Brazil. People can't say that very often, so they made the most of their opportunity.